Political Gastronomy: Food and Authority in the English Atlantic World

5. “A Continuall and Dayly Table for Gentlemen of Fashion”: Eating Like a Governor

C h a p t e r 5 “A Continuall and Dayly Table for Gentlemen of Fashion”: Eating Like a Governor In 1611, George Percy, the son of a nobleman and sometime deputy governor of the Jamestown settlement, wrote a letter asking his brother, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, to send food. Claiming that “the place which I hold in this Colonie . . . cannot be defraied with smale expence,” Percy wrote that his reputation depended on his ability “to keep a continuall and dayly Table for Gentlemen of fashion aboute me.” It is a striking comment to make barely a year after the end of Jamestown’s “starving time,” when by Percy’s own account English settlers resorted to cannibalism to survive. Presenting the jarring image of “Gentlemen of fashion” sharing Percy’s abundant table, the letter speaks volumes about the expectations English leaders had regarding the links between hospitality, status, and authority.1 To examine these expectations requires shifting focus from occasions when food was exchanged between English and Indians to occasions when it was shared and eaten by English men. This narrower focus reveals that at meals, the stakes were even higher. English officials struggled as much with each other over offers of hospitality as they did in exchanges with Indian leaders, for many of the same reasons. Hospitality presented unusually rich opportunities to display status and gender distinctions, to stake a claim to superiority , or to challenge such claims. Hosts and guests paid minute attention to their treatment at meals, especially when those who shared their table also shared their cultural assumptions. When Percy remarked to his brother that he felt obligated “to keep a “a contInuall and dayly taBle” 109 continuall and dayly Table,” he signaled a unique feature of meals, one that separated them from other forms of exchange. Facing a formal encounter with Indian leaders, an English official could prepare himself, could assemble what resources he had in order to stage an appropriate demonstration of what he felt to be his own status. Assuming they had food, leaders could not avoid eating, and it was impossible to lower the stakes at mealtime. An invitation could neither be refused nor withheld without giving offense, meaning that English leaders were often forced to extend an invitation, even when doing so threatened to undermine their claims to status and precedence. Last, as they navigated the challenge of presenting themselves on daily occasions as men suited to wield the authority of office, leading figures conducted themselves and described their conduct with reference to quite different models of a leader. Some men, like George Percy, sought to maintain a patriarchal connection between display, conduct, and status. Others, like Captain John Smith, phrased their claims in the language of humanism and military leadership. These languages both paid careful attention to how a leader conducted himself, especially at his daily meals. This opens up a further dimension of the struggle between English men for status and authority in the Atlantic world, a rhetorical struggle over what sort of leader was best suited for the early settlements. Alongside struggles for precedence in the settlements themselves, these rhetorical struggles to describe the image of an appropriate leader involved not only English settlers but also metropolitan investors and officials. As Felicity Heal has shown, the early modern English approached hospitality with a set of assumptions unique to that time, place, and people. Heal’s work draws on a considerable body of printed literature, from sermons to royal pronouncements, that described hospitality as key to the political stability and social health of the English nation. One contemporary definition of hospitality captures its most important facets: “a Liberal Entertainment of all sorts of Men, at ones House, whether Neighbours or Strangers, with kindness, especially with Meat, Drink and Lodgings.” Caleb Dalechamp, in a 1632 sermon, defined hospitality as encompassing “all the works of charity and mercy and courteous kindenesse.” One might expect such concerns to emerge in the course of a sermon, but Dalechamp focused especially on “the feasting of mean neighbours, the relieving of the poore, and the entertaining of honest guests and travellers of the same countrey.”2 Most of these writers described elite households and large, inclusive, 110 chapter 5 formal meals. Therefore, these descriptions stressed that hospitality must encapsulate hierarchy as well as reciprocity, the patriarchal relationships that underpinned the English social order. Social distinctions were manifested by means of a...